


like a box where i keep my love

by sepulcher



Category: SK8 the Infinity (Anime)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Episode 9, Idiots in Love, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 09:35:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29948001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sepulcher/pseuds/sepulcher
Summary: “Don’t you dare —— ” He dared. Because of course Nanjo Kojiro dared.(an anthology of not quite every time kojiro has carried kaoru over the years, but close.)
Relationships: Nanjo Kojiro | Joe/Sakurayashiki Kaoru | Cherry Blossom
Comments: 13
Kudos: 298





	like a box where i keep my love

**Author's Note:**

> this is technically directly episode 9 adjacent and inspired, because we all know joe carried him out of there, right? thus, i found myself wondering over all the times that he has carried cherry over the years that he's been stupid in love with him, and this was the result. adam is in this because i couldn't escape it, though i didn't tag him because fuck that guy, truly. the others are mentioned but not enough to warrant character tags as far as i can tell. there is an allusion to parental abuse, though i don't go super far into it.
> 
> this is loosely a 5+1 fic though there's more than 5 and it's not beta'd per usual, don't say i didn't warn you.

The moment that he landed, Kaoru knew several things. One, that he had only a few seconds of remaining moderately upright before summarily falling over and crashing spectacularly, embarrassing himself thoroughly. Two, that falling at this speed would hurt, an instinctive piece of knowledge that he had gained from how long he spent on a skateboard. And three, that his ankle wasn’t going to thank him for this, already in the midst of twisting or collapsing or whatever the motion was, he didn’t have quite enough time to analyze it before he was rolling across the pavement, skidding as he went.

He had a few moments to simply lay there and consider his life choices. Not all of them, mind you (though a teenager hadn’t made many especially major life choices by this point and he was perfectly aware of that, regardless of the fact that he was a petulant teenager), mostly the ones concerning the fact that he had latched onto skateboarding of all things in late childhood and it had, against all odds, been the one thing that had stuck with him. And therefore he was still there, an adolescent, skateboarding.

As if he would choose to be doing anything else.

Then the pain set in and he wondered, not for the first time, why he couldn’t have chosen something that was at least marginally less painful.

To be fair, injuries were a risk of any sport. That was what happened when you pushed your body to its limits and oftentimes to its literal breaking points and, if you were lucky, beyond. Kaoru supposed that it was better he was skateboarding than, say, figure skating, but it certainly didn’t make for a fun time when he did end up getting hurt. Why couldn’t calligraphy or coding consume the entirety of his thoughts and therefore take up the majority of his time? Other than occasional cramps in his hands, those things didn’t hurt at all.

“Kaoru!” he could hear Kojiro speeding towards him, hear his wheels against the pavement and the bright spark of concern in his voice. Kaoru hated hearing it, though a traitorous part of his mind enjoyed it —— not worrying Kojiro, but rather the fact that Kojiro was worried about him, or had the potential to be and expressed it with relative ease. It was secondary to him being an older brother, Kaoru figured. “Kaoru, are you okay?”

Closer, and closer. The earth was rumbling and by his estimations he only had fifteen seconds before Kojiro descended upon him, and simply lying here on the ground wasn’t especially enjoyable. Who would’ve thought?

Kaoru inhaled the sharp scent of tires and exhaust and braced his palm against the ground and pushed, heaving himself over, though not quite sitting up. Instead, he leaned back against his elbows and tried to blow his hair from his face with a sharp exhale and a jerk of his neck, head falling back to gaze up at the night sky above. The moon was out, though barely. A crescent in the sky that was on the verge of yet another temporary disappearance.

Kaoru tried to take stock of what hurt most on his body as Kojiro came to a stop beside him. His shoulder was aching but he doubted that he displaced it in any way (he rolled it absently and besides requisite anger following slamming against the unforgiving ground, it was fine), his hip was smarting slightly from where it had also made hard contact with the ground, and his ankle hurt. Luckily, his head felt fine, other than a baseline ache because he hadn’t been sleeping well the past several days, but hopefully he wouldn’t be staving off a concussion.

“I’m fine, stop yelling,” Kaoru was aware that he sounded irritated, though his irritation wasn’t wholly or even predominantly with Kojiro and his concern. No, Kaoru was primarily pissed that he had wiped quite so spectacularly, and now his body ached as if to say _well you’re the one who chose this hobby_ , which he was perfectly aware of, thank you.

“I wasn’t yelling, you’re just mad that you fell,” annoyance was blatant, though it looked like it was still secondary to the concern that Kojiro was feeling. Older brother instincts.

“Were you not yelling at me down the hill?” Kaoru glared at him, despite the fact that there was no reason for him to be picking a fight with Kojiro at this exact moment.

“Shut up, you didn’t see how bad the fall was,” Kojiro’s nose was going pink, to Kaoru’s fascination. Was he embarrassed? Or was he just getting mad? Sometimes they looked extremely similar on his face.

Kaoru sighed heavily and pushed off of his elbows to sit up properly. Kojiro’s arms reached out automatically, as if he was going to try bracing or supporting him or something absurd like that. Kaoru batted his arms away impatiently and rubbed his aching shoulder, looking around. “Where’s my skateboard?”

For a fleeting moment, Kojiro looked caught between irritation and hurt, before he rolled his eyes and looked around. “I think I saw it go that way,” he said, more to himself than anything, straightening to jog in the direction that Kaoru’s skateboard had gone.

He watched him for a few seconds before he turned his attention to his ankle and started to move it experimentally, nose wrinkling as pain lanced up his leg. Probably not broken, unless it was a hairline fracture, but the sort of injury that would keep him off of his skateboard for far longer than he’d ever prefer. A week, maybe two, and by then it would be pure muscle memory, and all of his recent progress would be lost. Frustrating, but maybe it wasn’t as bad as it felt, at the moment.

At least it was just he and Kojiro tonight. Kaoru didn’t think that he was reluctant to injure himself in front of their other friends (though _friends_ is a generous word to apply to the others that they skateboarded with on a regular basis, but acquaintances was harsh and there wasn’t any other word that could apply, really), but he had a certain measure of pride that he hated to see damaged. Where falling and hurting himself was relatively embarrassing with Kojiro around the way that everything about adolescence felt embarrassing, he would’ve felt infinitely more furious with his blunder if the others were around.

And if Adam was around, he ——

Well. Luckily, he wasn’t.

He could hear Kojiro grumbling and looking for his skateboard, complaining that black blended in too well with dark asphalt and they should genuinely consider changing the colors of their skateboards or making them more noticeable in the dark, and Kaoru wanted to smile. Strange. He pressed his thumb against the corner of his mouth and breathed for a moment, listening to the screaming cicadas and Kojiro dig through bushes, and the compulsion passed. Instead he readied himself to stand up as he heard a triumphant exclamation. Kojiro had clearly found his board.

“Found it, we really should put reflective tape on —— _what_ are you doing?” humor bleeding back into concern and Kaoru glanced at him briefly from where he was levering himself back to something of a standing, upright position.

It didn’t escape either of their notices that he was crouching entirely on his uninjured foot. “What do you think I’m doing?” Kaoru said dismissively, and ignored Kojiro when he darted closer to his side as he straightened, still standing entirely on his good foot.

“You could’ve gotten a concussion!”

“I didn’t hit my head, idiot.”

“Those things can take time, you know,” Kojiro looked like he wanted to shake Kaoru for a moment, but refrained from doing so, likely because his own worry won out. “Can you even stand on that ankle?” In unison they both looked down at his ankle, which unhelpfully looked like it was starting to swell, because of course it did. The traitor.

“Of course I can,” Kaoru said confidently. Kojiro made a disbelieving noise and he glared at him, before putting weight on his ankle simply to prove that he could (as he presumed most teenagers were, Kaoru was motivated by spite 60% of the time) and promptly started to collapse.

Traitor. What was he calling a traitor? Well, the entirety of his body, obviously.

“Kaoru!” Kojiro, it seemed, had defaulted to exclaiming his name, and Kaoru wasn’t sure if he had ever heard so much panic suffused into the syllables of his name before. Their skateboards clattered unhelpfully to the ground as Kojiro lunged for him, though he didn’t have to go far, considering how closely he had been hovering. An arm wrapped around the back of his shoulders, palm curving (painfully) around the one that he had jostled, while his other arm crossed over Kaoru’s front, grabbing onto his waist. He was pulled against Kojiro’s body and held fast, and for several moments they just breathed, looking at each other.

“Don’t say a word,” Kaoru could feel his face warming out of sheer embarrassment.

“I told you,” Kojiro said, brows furrowed and mouth pulled down into a scowl. Kaoru wondered if he was imagining that Kojiro was briefly distracted, eyes going wide by their proximity, but it was a there and then gone expression. “I told you!”

“You’re saying words,” Kaoru tried to shove at Kojiro, but he didn’t budge, because of course he didn’t.

“Do you need to go to the hospital?”

“No,” Kaoru prayed to _god_ that he didn’t have to go to the hospital, that would require a phone call to his parents and who knows what else.

Kojiro made an annoyed noise, glaring more fiercely at him for a moment before sighing. “Fine, whatever,” and he released Kaoru’s waist, though started to stoop to get his arms beneath his knees, and Kaoru promptly started. Well. Flailing.

It wasn’t a graceful motion by any means.

“What are you doing?” Kaoru couldn’t keep the incredulity out of his voice.

“You can’t walk so I’m trying to pick you up, stupid,” Kojiro somehow managed to sound perfectly rational even with his obvious anger, and Kaoru wanted to kick him.

“I can limp, dumbass,” Kaoru’s knee jerked as Kojiro legitimately started to try and pick him up, and Kaoru could see Kojiro’s knees buckle ominously even carrying half of Kaoru’s weight. “You’re not strong enough to carry me, you’re going to injure both of us!”

“What? I’m strong enough to carry you, I carry my sisters around all the time,” Kojiro said, clearly affronted by Kaoru’s accusation that he couldn’t carry him, as if that settled everything in one fell swoop.

Kaoru gaped at him for a moment, trying to figure out how offended he was at this point. “I’m bigger than your sisters, you raging imbecile!”

“You’re tiny!”

“You’re barely bigger than I am.”

“But I’m still _bigger_.”

“Don’t you dare —— ”

He dared. Because of course Nanjo Kojiro dared.

Kojiro was relatively strong. He had more muscle tone than Kaoru did, at least, and he was broader all around whereas when they were younger Kaoru had been the taller and broader one, though only slightly. Kojiro was naturally larger and Kaoru had seen him heft bags of flour around his family’s kitchen, balance an extremely highly stacked and heavy cake to take it to the refrigerator, carry desks without much strain on his part, and many other things. Kojiro’s twin sisters _did_ essentially climb on him like he was a playground, and he had swung them around on his arms plenty of times.

But: Kaoru may not be especially large or heavy and was, indeed, on the slighter side that bordered on outright svelte, much to his occasional mortification, but he was still a nearly full grown man. He was not a sack of flour, a heavy cake, desks, or Kojiro’s twin sisters.

So, yes, there was a moment suspended in time where Kojiro had picked him up and they simply stood there staring at each other for the duration, before they punctually fell over. It was like something out of a television show, truth be told, and Kaoru had another moment to contemplate the relative enormity of his life choices, lying there on the asphalt.

Instead of pondering his decision to pick up skateboarding as his primary hobby, however, he was wondering why the hell he had chosen Kojiro to be his best friend.

“Don’t say a word,” Kojiro said.

“I told you,” Kaoru said immediately.

Kojiro groaned and he looked thoroughly embarrassed, now, face gone a reddish pink as he rubbed his face before rolling and standing up easily. Kaoru envied him terribly from where he was sprawled on the ground. “Did you hit your head?” Kojiro even sounded a bit sorry.

“No,” Kaoru sighed, pushing himself back up to sitting. Kojiro extended a hand and Kaoru stared at it suspiciously, “Don’t try to pick me up again.”

“I won’t,” Kojiro was being petulant and Kaoru sorely wished that he could laugh at him.

But he was too sore, so. He took the hand offered to him and dug his good heel into the ground to allow himself to be pulled upwards by the strength that Kojiro did, indeed, have. They stood there for a moment beneath the waning moon and stared at each other. Kojiro’s hand was solid and warm against his and Kaoru felt a bone deep exhaustion begin to take over. He, perhaps, could’ve landed the trick that he was attempting to pull off if he hadn’t been so exhausted, but that wasn’t really important anymore. What was done was done and he was injured and wouldn’t be able to skateboard for at least a week by his estimation, and now he just wanted to sleep. As if he could seep.

“I can try to carry you on my back,” Kojiro said.

“As if you can balance me and our skateboards,” Kaoru pulled his hand from Kojiro’s and instead slung his arm around his shoulders, tucking himself up against Kojiro’s side. “Just support me for now.”

Kojiro looked at him quietly for a moment, his expression curiously fathomless, though maybe Kaoru was just too tired to analyze it very much at all. In the end, he ducked his head into a nod and Kaoru balanced on his own for a moment as Kojiro stooped down to pick up their skateboards. They assembled themselves into something of a useful formation to get him from point A to point B, Kaoru holding onto Kojiro’s shoulder and leaning against his weight, and they started walking.

By the second block, Kojiro had placed his hand supportively on Kaoru’s hip and Kaoru leaned his head onto Kojiro’s shoulder intermittently as they talked quietly to each other, slipping through the canals of the city under the guise of night, illuminated by brief slips of streetlight as they went.

(There were dozens of times that Kojiro attempted to carry him and summarily supported his weight after an especially bad fall skateboarding. It was par for the course of their hobby, considering they were trying to do absurd things on wooden slats with wheels attached to them, and they were reckless teenagers who thought themselves untouchable by injury in the grand scheme of things. Kojiro was easily the person that Kaoru was most comfortable with failing in front of, even if they bickered and fought when it happened, and he tolerated Kojiro’s repeated attempts to carry him that generally failed.

It wasn’t as though Kojiro were immune from falling and hurting himself, too, and Kaoru half carried him home every time, trying and failing to sneak him in through the back door or the livingroom window or, one memorable time, the kitchen window. All attempts summarily failed, of course, but they tried, and that was what mattered.

The key difference was that Kaoru wasn’t nearly as intent on being able to legitimately carry Kojiro as Kojiro was in regards to carrying him. There wasn’t an immense difference between them at this point, but Kojiro was already taller and broader in the shoulders and he was still growing, unlike Kaoru who seemed to have petered out in growth around fifteen. He found Kojiro’s determined attempts amusing, generally, or else slightly embarrassing when he tried and they ended up toppling over on top of each other, sometimes worsening a sprain by degrees, though he couldn’t figure out why carrying Kaoru had apparently turned into a benchmark for Kojiro in regards to his strength.

Most likely because once Kojiro wanted to best something he, by and large, didn’t stop until he had achieved the result that he wanted, but Kaoru wondered.)

“Come on, hurry up,” it was always rotten luck when they had to run from the police, but it was either get away or deal with phonecalls to home and being asked a million questions about why they were out so late and what in the world possessed them to skateboard at this hour.

They tore down an alleyway, Kaoru slightly in front of Kojiro, and he hopped off of his board as they reached a high platform. “Here, give me a boost,” he glanced back at Kojiro, who nodded and braced himself against the wall.

It was something of a struggle to get him up, but they managed it in the end and Kaoru reached down to Kojiro and clasped his hands to pull him up in return. They both rolled and started running further into the darkness, laughing quietly as they heard the guys who were chasing them start to wonder, loudly, where in the world that they had gone. Kaoru bumped against Kojiro in the dark, who bumped against him in return, and they stumbled over each other before running onward.

Kaoru liked feeling special. He presumed that it was a remnant of being perceived as special as a child and gifted as he grew up, leaving him wanting for attention or some form of acknowledgement or support. But then he wondered if all teenagers liked feeling special, and surely they all did, considering how much any one of them clamored for attention at any given moment. Always trying to stand out. Always trying to conquer the next thing and the next and the next, in a race careening towards adulthood.

He didn’t enjoy acknowledging that he flourished beneath attention. It felt somehow childish to do so, childish to feel this way, and a seventeen year old was hardly a child anymore, but he wasn’t an adult either, and he felt caught in a strange flux that he resented on principle, teeth aching with it, mind overactive and irate.

But it was why he had taken a shine to Kojiro, when they first became friends, where normally Kaoru was prickly and reluctant to interface with children around his age. Kojiro had thought that skateboarding was impressive and thought that he was amazing, regardless of the fact that he had been an amateur at best and terrible at worst, and Kaoru had enjoyed the attention. They had fallen into the give and take and argumentative nature of their relationship rather quickly, but Kaoru couldn’t deny that he had liked that he had felt exceptional to Kojiro.

Yes, he liked feeling special, who didn’t? If the entirety of the world were coerced into telling the truth, surely everyone would admit that they enjoyed feeling special —— he kept trying to rationalize it to himself. Taking it apart and putting it back together, like any of the computers that he had built when he was younger and any of the technology he had invented in recent years. And when that failed, he tried to follow it like the systematic strokes of a paintbrush, but he kept coming up short.

It was absurd to feel this conflicted in regards to someone like Adam. Someone that they had barely known, when all was said and done, and someone that they just skateboarded with. _You guys are special_ —— there wasn’t necessarily any deeper meaning to it, and Kaoru wondered why he had attached himself to it quite so thoroughly.

A silly, childish compulsion. The impulses of an elementary school child.

Maybe conflicted wasn’t the right word. Hurt was more apt. Bizarrely hurt, but hurt all the same, and Kaoru wondered over it obliquely, as if he were a tertiary party to this and not front and center. Why had he changed? Had he truly changed at all? Or was that who he had always been, simply redirected? Did it matter, anyways, considering that he had gone off to America and they perhaps wouldn’t see each other again?

It didn’t, but it did.

Kaoru wondered if he was more angry that it felt as though his pride had been town down than hurt over the whole spectacle and decided that it would be best if he thought about it in such a way. If not better than more palatable: there was a strange, furious, and violent edge to Adam that he had never truly thought about, never really acknowledged. It was so easy to see things and summarily discard them as noncontributory, or at least as things that didn’t impact him in any direct nor absolute way. To ignore them outright.

It was stupid to be mulling over this in general, never mind that he was in the middle of the schoolyard and morning lessons would be starting soon, but given that he had been waiting for Kojiro his thoughts had strayed to recent events, as they tended to when he gave them a sliver of room. The thought of Kojiro was distracting, if nothing else, and he glanced at the large clock at the front of their school, raising an eyebrow at the time, and checking his phone in the next moment to see if there were any messages waiting for him.

Then, as if summoned by conceptualization alone, arms circled Kaoru’s waist and he felt himself lifted into the air. Given that he was caught off guard by the proceedings, there was a moment of blind panic where he not only shouted wordlessly, because that wouldn’t have been embarrassing enough, his legs kicked and he felt immensely stupid, crushed against someone’s chest who he could only presume was Kojiro, since no one else in their right mind would pick up Kaoru, never mind do so unannounced. A bunch of girls walking towards the school entrance laughed behind heir hands. In fact, several people were laughing. Too many people.

“What are you _doing_ , you idiot?” Kaoru wasn’t sure if he felt embarrassed or enraged and felt strung between the two, though they weren’t exactly opposite extremes, were they? His feet were definitively hovering off the ground by several inches, and he shoved at Kojiro’s arms fruitlessly. “We’re in the schoolyard.”

“You looked like you could use a pick me up,” oh, he knew that Kojiro was grinning his stupid shit-eating grin, the smile that he had whenever he was being especially annoying or when he thought that he had irritated Kaoru in just the right way. Which, he had, driving all other thoughts out of his head with a deft precision that would make snipers jealous in the way that only someone who knew him as well as Kojiro did, could. “You had that look on your face you get when you’re mad enough to punch someone. Usually me.”

“Put me down,” Kaoru was, without a shadow of a doubt, going to punch Kojiro the moment that he could, but in the meantime tried to elbow him in the bicep and only felt mildly mollified when it landed. “We have class in a few minutes, dumbass.”

Kojiro hummed, as if thinking, “I could just carry you to our classroom.”

“Don’t you dare!” Kaoru was shouting, now, and tried to twist in Kojiro’s arms, though he failed and he felt more than heard Kojiro laugh for his troubles, chest shaking with it.

“I think it’s the safest way to get there without being assaulted, though,” Kojiro, damn him, started legitimately walking towards the front doors, heedless of Kaoru trying to kick his knees. “We might fall down the stairs, but…”

“You _asshole_ ,” Kaoru was seething at this point, and then the bell rang and they both paused in the obviously empty school yard. Kojiro dropped him and he stooped down to pick up his schoolbag and they both started for the doors of the school, heedless of the fact that there was a teacher standing there yelling at them to hurry up before they got detention.

Kojiro was laughing to himself and Kaoru shoulder checked him as they sprinted towards the stairs for good measure, and he found himself laughing when Kojiro stumbled as a result, twisting awkwardly to avoid crashing into one of the fragile and infinitely breakable school walls. Kaoru took the stairs two at a time and dodged when Kojiro made a grab for his ankles, their laughter echoing throughout the stairwell and the hallway.

“Nanjo, Sakurayashiki, get to class!”

Later, during lunch, he shoved Kojiro for good measure.

“Ow, what was that for?”

“You know exactly what that was for,” Kaoru said snippily, frowning down at Kojiro from where he had sprawled on the ground. They were outside, again, the weather was too nice for them to remain indoors, but they were being watched too closely to take out their skateboards without getting in even more trouble. “We got detention because of your idiocy.”

“Alright, fair,” Kojiro said with a shrug, making himself comfortable on the ground, because he loved irritating Kaoru. “I forgot that it was nearly time for the first bell.”

“How could you forget that, moron?”

“Well, you do call me an idiot a lot,” Kojiro said with a grin, and Kaoru kicked his ankle for his troubles and he winced, grumbling. “Lost track of time, obviously.”

“Lost track of time picking me up for no reason,” Kaoru sat down on the ground next to him, glancing around at their classmates who were milling about the yard as well. “What was that for, anyways?”

“I told you, you looked like you could use a pick me up.”

“So you decided to take that… literally.”

“Why not? It cheers up my sisters when I do it,” Kojiro dodged out of the way of Kaoru’s foot this time, laughing before lying back against the grass. Dappled light slanted over his face and Kaoru stared at him for a moment before looking back out over the schoolyard.

“I didn’t look like I needed a pick me up,” he said after a minute of sitting in silence, during which Kojiro had closed his eyes and cushioned his head with his heads, elbows spread wide, relaxing into the ground. “I was thinking.”

“You had that look on your face,” Kojiro repeated, as if that explained anything at all.

“You said that already.”

“You know the one,” Kojiro waved his hand in the air like he was literally grasping for words, and Kaoru looked at him again. “The one you get when you’re lost in thought and you’re getting worked up over it. I wasn’t sure if you were mad or something else, but you looked like you were well on your way to imploding, or something.”

Kaoru stared before blinking and looking away. He felt acutely seen, the way that he often did with Kojiro, to the point that it inspired discomfort in him, but not exactly the kind that made him uncomfortable with Kojiro, himself. More like the highly disconcerting feeling of being seen and known and not being able to do anything about it, and not being sure if he wanted to do anything about it even if he could. Kaoru didn’t hate being known by Kojiro, exactly. He just didn’t know what to do with the knowledge that Kojiro could read him as if he were an open book.

“I was thinking about Adam,” it felt redundant to say it aloud. Kaoru could guess and would likely be exceedingly correct that Kojiro had known exactly what he had been thinking about when he had seen him that morning across the schoolyard and had decided, between the space of one breath and the next, to simply pick Kaoru up.

Still, Kojiro’s eyes opened and they stared at each other for a moment before he said, simply, “I know.”

It was an invitation to talk or discuss or air out his grievances or whatever it was that Kaoru felt was necessary to speak about, or even what he didn’t feel was necessary to say aloud. Here and now, beneath a primarily cloudless sky in the midst of the tailend of springtime as they lounged in the schoolyard and life continued around them, forever in motion and forever in flux, and Kaoru pondered it for a moment. Considered it heavily. Thought about the offer, though he knew that the offer was an eternal one. Kojiro was always willing and ready to listen to him whenever he needed a sounding board or general silence or someone to speak with, no matter what the topic was. That was how Kojiro worked, that was how he operated, and for the majority of their friendship Kaoru was perfectly aware that he could talk to Kojiro about anything, any time he wanted.

This was devoid of presumption, a simple invitation.

Yet here, looking at Kojiro look at him, he wondered what Kojiro saw and wondered about the odd, fathomless, intent expression on his face. As if he was staring at Kaoru to commit him to memory. It was peculiar, and Kaoru once again wasn’t sure what to do with it.

He found that he didn’t want to talk about Adam at all, really. “How did the twins’ gymnastics meet go?” he said instead.

Kojiro smiled.

“I’ll go ask for a ladder.”

“Why would we ask for a ladder, I can just lift you up and you can grab it?”

“We’re in the middle of a store, you idiot, we can just get a step ladder.”

“It would be faster if I just lifted you!”

“And then we would fall and knock over the shelves.”

“Just come here, Kaoru.”

An annoyed noise. “If we break anything you’re paying for it.”

(They didn’t break anything, and it was faster, though still briefly embarrassing to have Kojiro crouch down and wrap his arms around his thighs to lift him up to the highest shelves of the store. But, for the sake of convenience, fine.)

As if on autopilot, Kaoru called Kojiro with his parents voices still echoing in his mind. He didn’t spend any time at all thinking about it or considering his options, because there were no other options to consider, in truth. His hands felt curiously numb as he held his phone in his hands, and the world seemed blurred as though he weren’t wearing his classes or his contact had shifted, but he could feel his glasses resting on the bridge of his nose, so that wasn’t it at all. It took several tries for him to open their emails and then to call Kojiro, and he realized, distantly, that his hands were shaking.

How annoying.

The phone rang twice before there was a click and, “Kaoru?” Kojiro was sitting in his livingroom, probably watching something with his sisters. He could hear the television on in the background, tinny through the phone, and he closed his eyes and imagined Kojiro sitting with his legs magnanimously across his sisters’ laps to trap them there jokingly, despite their protests.

He should speak. Kaoru opened his mouth and then closed it, and did that several more times. It felt all at once like an impossible, insurmountable task. He felt too tired, too weary, to weak to manage to make even a single noise, and he felt foolish sitting there and unable to speak, phone pressed against his ear and mashed along the side of his face.

“Kaoru?” Kojiro said again after a long silence, and one of the twins was speaking. Kojiro was getting up and walking out of the livingroom, probably into the kitchen, the television was getting quieter. “One sec, you don’t need to pause the movie, I just need to talk to Kaoru —— Kaoru, are you okay?”

Stupid, caring Kojiro. It was Wednesday night, which meant that it was the night that he reserved for his little sisters, which happened to coincide with the night that their parents would go out for a date night, leaving Kojiro on babysitting duty. It was Wednesday night and it was the same as it had been for years, ever since Kojiro was definitively old enough to look after his sisters, but Kojiro had picked up the phone anyways. Idiot.

Anxiety was a heavy knot in his chest and he inhaled around it. It didn’t budge nor unfurl but he found his voice. Just enough to say, “Kojiro,” in a strange, wavering voice that sounded like his own but didn’t, and he found himself briefly confused by it.

“Kaoru,” Kojiro said again, sounding more alarmed now. “Where are you right now?”

He ducked his head and pressed his forehead against his knees. “Down the street from my house.”

“Shizuko, Manami, grab your coats,” a pause and a high voice in the background. “Don’t look at me like that I can’t just leave you two home alone. Don’t argue with me, either, we just need to go get Kaoru,” his voice was further away, as if he had taken the phone away from his mouth, and then Kojiro came back. “Just stay right there, okay? Don’t go anywhere.”

“As if I’d go anywhere, idiot,” Kaoru said, though he didn’t have any energy to spare on arguing, but he hung up just to prove a point. What point was he making? He didn’t really know.

He felt foolish just sitting there on a bench across from the park that he had played in as a child, back pressed against the wall, feet propped up and knees pressed close to his chest. But he had told Kojiro he wouldn’t go anywhere, so he sat there, tonguing his lip ring and carefully not thinking. Instead, he concentrated on the anxiety that was beginning to seep its way through his body, starting from his core and radiating outward. Or maybe it was spiraling. He couldn’t really tell.

After a few minutes he felt his phone vibrate and peered at it, seeing that Kojiro had sent him a message. He glanced around, aware that this street was always quiet at night, given that it was a residential area, never mind that it was affluent on top of that, and he took a picture of what was right in front of him to sent to Kojiro.

It occurred to him, humorous in a morbid sort of way, that he was sitting almost directly across from where he had met Kojiro for the first time. He was several degrees off, and if he shifted a few inches to the left he would have a perfect line of sight of where he had crashed into Kojiro what felt like a lifetime ago and they had both, quite literally, tangled their lives together. Kojiro had been shocked about being knocked over by some kid on a skateboard, and Kaoru had been affronted that Kojiro had the gall to be thoroughly in his way, and they had argued about it almost immediately after the shock had worn off, but Kojiro had been amazed by the concept of skateboarding and Kaoru by extension and Kaoru had been, despite himself, endeared by Kojiro.

Kojiro was, at least, a distracting enough thought that Kaoru didn’t have to think about what had sent him out here to sit in the dark, just outside of the light of a streetlight, in the cold air. Autumn was fading into winter and while he wasn’t freezing, as he had the forethought to put on a jacket, but his nose was getting colder and he tucked his hands against his sides, staring off into space. Exhausted. Thinking but not, and thinking himself in circles to avoid overthinking. It was a strange balance.

He had no idea how long he sat there before Kojiro apparently melted out of the darkness. One moment there was no one in front of him and the next, there was Kojiro, staring down at him with worry clear on his face from his widened eyes to the way that he was breathing, as if he had run here. Kaoru wanted to make fun of him for being so worried for a moment, but found that he was too exhausted to speak again. Or maybe too anxious. The two things were deeply intertwined in his mind, regardless, and instead of trying to piece it apart he thought about how far away the Nanjo residence was from here. Not terribly far, but still twenty minutes on foot.

“Kaoru,” Kojiro said, and hearing his name in repetition tonight was strange. It looked like Kojiro was contemplating saying _are you okay?_ but thought better of it, a myriad of emotions flickering across his face quickly in sequence. The twins were somewhere to his left, and Kaoru thought to say hello to them. “Can you walk?” was what Kojiro finally decided to follow up with.

Could he walk? Well, yes. He could walk, given that he had the physical capability, and despite his weariness Kaoru was aware that he simply needed to drag himself to standing and he would be able to get nearly anywhere before he collapsed.

But could he truly? It felt strange. This racket of emotions, anxiety and exhaustion and a million other things tangling, and he felt suddenly sure that he wouldn’t be able to move at all. Paralyzed beneath the weight of it all, he just wanted to fall asleep.

Kojiro stared at him, and Kaoru saw the moment at he understood. There was something rueful and sad in his expression and the curve of his mouth. He reached out to tousel Kaoru’s hair, fingers sifting through the strands, and he pushed Kaoru’s bangs out of his eyes. Everything was still blurry, as though he were peering at it through a haze, but Kojiro was there in perfect, startling clarity. It was almost a relief.

Kaoru watched as Kojiro took one of his wrists loosely in his hand and then turned, taking a knee on the ground. He wondered for a moment if he should move and help him in this endeavor, but it appeared that Kojiro felt he had it handled as he reached blindly for Kaoru’s other wrist. He helped there, at least, and found himself being pulled forward against Kojiro’s back, arms draped over his shoulders. Kojiro curved his hands beneath his thighs, then, and inhaled deeply before standing with Kaoru draped against his back.

He had the sense and energy to shift himself accordingly, bracing his legs more securely against Kojiro’s hips, but found that he couldn’t do much, otherwise. The twins were fluttering about, there was no other word for it. He could feel one of them touch his side and they were talking, asking if Kaoru was alright, and he simply laid his head against Kojiro’s neck, closing his eyes as Kojiro reassured them that he was alright, just tired.

It was easy to let himself be carried all the way to the Nanjo residence. He felt a pang of guilt about it, he could feel Kojiro start to struggle a bit when they reached the halfway point because Kaoru may not be the heaviest person in the world but carrying someone on your back any distance was inherently uncomfortable, and he ended up looping his arms properly around Kojiro’s shoulders. Not an apology, exactly, but an acknowledgement.

Kojiro didn’t have to do this for him at all. But he did, anyways, because he was Nanjo Kojiro.

When the Nanjo residence came into view, Kaoru could feel him sigh. “Thank you,” he said as quietly as he could manage, nose pressed against where neck met shoulder. “You can put me down.”

“Nah,” Kojiro said, hiking him higher as they walked towards the front door. “I got you all this way, didn’t I? No sense giving up now.”

Kaoru didn’t argue as Kojiro carried him inside and then, as gently as he could manage, deposited him on the couch. Kojiro stumbled, almost crushing Kaoru with his weight, though Kaoru didn’t mind. He settled himself on the couch as the twins piled on also, talking animated as Kojiro disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a glass of water that he handed to Kaoru, who took it with a flicker of a smile.

They watched a movie together, Kaoru on one end of the couch with Kojiro right beside him and the twins sprawled somehow across all of them, and Kaoru felt himself begin to nod off against Kojiro’s shoulder with more ease than he had fallen asleep with in weeks.

He was briefly roused when Kojiro’s parents returned home and heard him say, sunnily, “Kaoru’s going to stay over tonight, is that okay?” and it occurred to him to say no, he couldn’t intrude on their hospitality anymore than he already had and that he could return to his parents’ home, but he fell back asleep quickly thereafter.

The next morning, Kojiro gave him a long, considering look when they saw each other in the kitchen, as if he was deciding on something. And then his face split into a grin and he asked Kaoru what he wanted for breakfast, they had stuff for pretty much anything but they’d have to make it quick since they had to get to school, and Kaoru could borrow one of his older school uniforms since he didn’t have one here, and to hurry up.

“Thank you,” Kaoru said again in the midst of Kojiro’s rambling, cutting him off swiftly. “Again.”

Kojiro’s smile gentled, less radiant and more soothing. “Don’t mention it, Kaoru.”

He’d tell him later, Kaoru thought. Later, not in the weak morning light, the remnants of worry still clear on his face and the way that he was looking at Kaoru. He’d tell him later, and he knew that he truly, genuinely would, because he told Kojiro nearly everything, even when it was difficult and even when it was hard, and Kojiro did the same for him in return.

Though he’d leave out the part where he felt safe, pressed against Kojiro’s back with his hands bracing him. That didn’t feel important, and overall secondary to the fact that Kojiro was the first and only person that he called.

(The first time Kojiro picked him up successfully, without wavering or threatening to fall over, Kaoru hadn’t been looking at him but had a strange premonition that something bizarre was about to happen. And, between the space of one breath and the next, he was being gathered into Kojiro’s arms and thrown across his shoulders ridiculously, and he had been too shocked to yell at him properly. Instead he merely yelped, though he would deny that he had made any such noise fervently.

Kojiro looked so proud of himself and his steadily, ridiculously, increasing strength that Kaoru had a moment of pause, staring at him upside down, caught on his luminous smile and the way that his eyes sparkled in the setting sunlight.

Just a moment, though, before he felt his temper snap and he tried to bring his knees towards his head and, summarily, crush Kojiro’s stupid head against his abdomen.

They ended up falling over.)

All things considered, Kaoru thought of himself as a social drinker. He drank when it seemed appropriate, and he didn’t get drunk especially often, but he wasn’t exactly against it. Drinking was enjoyable with some level of moderation, and it was dreadfully boring to drink alone without any other motivating factors to drink at all.

So when Kojiro showed up at the door of his apartment carrying with him a good amount of alcohol he had clearly procured from the store around the corner of Kaoru’s building, he had only been confused for a moment before Kojiro cited Kaoru’s recent breakup as a reason that clearly drinking was in order, and then he had rolled his eyes and let him into his apartment.

“You have a key, you know,” Kaoru said, stepping back to give Kojiro space to toe off his shoes.

“You were obviously home, I could see the lights on through the windows,” Kojiro said, breezing past Kaoru into the sitting room, where he deposited two of the bags he was carrying. “Were you making instant ramen?” The judgment was glaringly ominous in his voice.

“It’s dinnertime, you idiot,” Kaoru said defensively, “and it was what I had on hand.”

“Pathetic,” Kojiro rolled his eyes as he stepped into Kaoru’s kitchen, taking the bowl that he had just filled with his dinner and dumping it down the sink without preamble. “How is a brainiac like you bad at cooking, it’s just following recipes. It’s like science!”

“We’ve had this discussion a million times, why did you just waste perfectly good food?” Kaoru glared at him from the entrance to the kitchen, arms crossed, leaning against the archway as he watched Kojiro begin unpacking groceries from the third bag that he had carried inside. All of the ingredients to make Kaoru’s favorite curry, he realized dimly.

“Because I’m going to make you better, more appropriate comfort food,” Kojiro said, organizing the ingredients on the counter.

“Comfort food?”

“For your first breakup, obviously,” Kojiro opened the drawer where Kaoru kept the majority of his cooking implements, despite the fact that he, personally, almost never used them. Because he was awful at cooking, as they both knew.

“This seems excessive,” Kaoru reached above the refrigerator to grab a colander, which he handed to Kojiro who started to pile vegetables into the basket to wash. “I’m not heartbroken, dumbass.”

“It’s traditional to drink and eat with your best friend to commiserate over an ended relationship,” Kojiro pushed several pots and pans aside beneath the counter until he found the largest one, dragging it out from the shadows. “Do you even wash these?”

“You know I don’t cook,” Kaoru said, taking the pot from him and swapping it with the colander to start washing it in the sink, “I don’t even know when the last time I used these was. Didn’t you say that bemoaning breakups is a waste of time?”

Kojiro shrugged, starting to peel the carrots. “I said that to you when I was extremely drunk, to be fair.”

“You slept with another woman that night,” Kaoru raised and eyebrow at him as he rinsed the pot.

“Everyone bounces back from a relationship differently!”

“Uh huh,” Kaoru set the pot on the stove. “Fine, you’re being pigheaded about this so I won’t stop you. Do you need any help?”

“Just a beer,” Kojiro nudged an elbow into Kaoru’s back, forcing him back towards the sitting room. “I don’t want you touching any of this, you’ll ruin it,” Kaoru made an affronted noise, whirling around to glare at him as Kojiro simply grinned at him. “Don’t look at me like that, we both know that you’re cursed in the kitchen and the last thing I need is your help when cooking.”

“I will kick you out of this apartment.”

“No you won’t.”

Kaoru seriously considered it for a moment, if only to knock down Kojiro’s confidence slightly, but ended up getting him a beer anyways.

Honestly, Kaoru didn’t understand the need for dramatics. He genuinely wasn’t distraught over nor mourning the end of his first serious relationship, they had both parted on amicable terms, though he supposed that there was a requisite level of sadness or otherwise regret that came with such a thing. Kaoru wasn’t even sure that he had been in love with the man, though his companionship had been nice and he had been fond enough of him to have a serious relationship for several months.

But he supposed that Kojiro’s concern was touching in an objective way, even if it did seem abrupt and unnecessary in the grand scheme of things. He and Kojiro saw significantly less of each other these days, secondary to life and adulthood and the fact that they didn’t have school to draw them together, though it wasn’t as though they never saw each other. Kojiro was still his best friend, no matter what, but he wondered if it was a further excuse for them to simply be around each other again, the way they had been fused at the hip not so long ago.

Besides, Kojiro had a key to his apartment, and Kaoru knew that when he set his mind to something he was going to follow through on it no matter what, therefore rendering it fruitless to try to ward Kojiro off from this plan of drinking together to soothe hs apparently broken heart.

At least he got Kojiro’s cooking out of it.

“Carla, stop music,” he said after grabbing his own drink, stopping the music that he had put on some time ago as he turned on the television and looked for a movie to put on. There were several that they had always meant to watch together and hadn’t quite gotten around to and he ended up choosing one at random, pulling his laptop closer to him to finish a line of coding.

“You should program her to respond to my voice too,” Kojiro said from the kitchen. Divine smells were already starting to waft over to where Kaoru was sitting, and he could feel his stomach rumble since some idiot had decided to throw his dinner down the drain.

Though said idiot was feeding him far better, so.

“Absolutely not,” he said without hesitation. The idea of Kojiro, being able to control Carla? Terrible.

They argued about it circuitously as Kaoru finished his assignment and set his laptop aside to concentrate on drinking instead, and they had both worked their way through two beers by the time the curry was ready, which they ate at the small kotatsu Kaoru had, kicking each other’s feet childishly.

“I hate beer,” Kaoru said sometime after they had started a second movie and made their way through half of the alcohol that Kojiro had brought over.

“I know, you pretentious priss,” Kojiro said and he mumbled when Kaoru reached over to shove him and ended up missing his massive shoulders somehow, shoving his head, instead. “What do you think I’m made of, money?”

“We could’ve just had the wine I have here.”

“You have a single bottle, genius, we can’t both get drunk off one bottle of wine..”

“Tastes better than this, you imbecile.”

Not that it mattered considering they were already drunk and, despite Kaoru’s complaints, they finished off everything that Kojiro had brought over. It was only practical to, he reasoned with himself, considering that Kojiro had spent money on it and therefore it would be impolite to reject it outright, no matter how awful it tasted.

Granted, he was drunk when he was reasoning with himself, but the point still stood.

Kaoru wasn’t sure if it was the fourth or fifth movie of the night, but he was slumped against Kojiro’s side. Or, if you were arguing semantics, he was curled up against Kojiro’s side, head pillowed on his shoulder and found himself thinking of how much muscle mass Kojiro had put on in the past couple of years and how ridiculously absurd that was, given that he had already been at least athletically muscular before, but now he was putting on mass like a bodybuilder. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was thinking about it, but it was hard to think about literally anything else when Kojiro’s arm was draped over his shoulders and Kaoru was just lying there, pressed against his bulk.

And he was drunk.

“You’re ridiculous,” he said, squinting at the line of Kojiro’s bicep. He wasn’t even flexing.

Kojiro laughed suddenly, too loud, and Kaoru wanted to hit him. He pinched his arm, instead, and found himself furthermore annoyed by the fact that there was just no give. “Okay?”

“Who puts on muscle this quickly?” Kaoru squeezed Kojiro’s arm. He didn’t know why, he just did. Drunk brain was as much of an idiot as Kojiro.

“I’m just lucky,” Kojiro was still laughing and he flexed, because he could and because he knew it would irritate Kaoru, who felt the muscle tense beneath his hand and break his grip, of all things.

“No one should be this absurdly muscular,” he said, sitting up and listing to the side strangely. Kojiro grabbed his waist to stop him from falling over outright and Kaoru hit his hand, causing him to laugh harder and him go to allow Kaoru to twist, squinting down at Kojiro’s chest. Which he reached out and pressed his fingers into, because he could.

Kojiro smiled up at him, a guileless and broad smile that was almost boyish,especially when accompanied by his flushed face, “I could definitely carry you now.”

It took Kaoru a moment to realize that he was referring to when they were in high school and Kojiro had attempted to carry him after an injury and they summarily fell over. “Could not,” he said petulantly, for no reason other than to be difficult quite frankly.

“Definitely could.”

“Then prove it, idiot.”

Kojiro blinked a few times before his smiled broadened into an outright grin and he rushed forward shoulder first and Kaoru felt the wind get knocked out of him as Kojiro’s ridiculous shoulder met his abdomen and then the world spun as he was unceremoniously thrown over Kojiro’s shoulder and then they were standing up. Kojiro wavered slightly, but Kaoru guessed that was more from drunkenness then actually being off balance from Kaoru’s weight.

“Kojiro!” Kaoru was definitively shouting, or at least he definitely wasn’t speaking quietly or even at what was considered a normal indoor level. “Put me down,” he drove his fist into Kojiro’s back, who stumbled slightly, arm tightening around Kaoru’s thighs as he staggered and then righted himself. The swaying was honestly nauseating.

“Stop squirming so much,” Kojiro complained, pinching the back of Kaoru’s thigh blindly as he stumbled towards the bedroom. “You’re the one who asked me to prove it.”

“You try being flung upside down and carried, you gorilla,” Kaoru wanted, badly, to bite him. He just wasn’t sure where, exactly, he wanted to bite him.

“Gorilla?” Kojiro was laughing again, which vibrated oddly through Kaoru’s stomach.

“Yes, gorilla. You have the intelligence of one,” Kaoru said, before shouting briefly as he was thrown off of Kojiro’s shoulder and onto his bed, bouncing on the mattress. It took a moment to reorient himself to the room, worsened by the fact that his head was at the foot of the bed. And the nausea.

“And the strength,” Kojiro said, cheeky as could be, flexing again.

“You’re insufferable,” Kaoru said, rolling out of bed and running into Kojiro’s legs. “Move, gorilla.”

“You literally rolled into me,” Kojiro said as he stumbled back a few steps.

Kaoru glared up at him and seriously considered climbing into bed without changing, though the decision was made for him when he tried to stand up and the world spun and he ended up clutching at Kojiro’s arms, who almost fell over anyways out of shock. “Forget it,” he said, voice muffled against his chest. “Get in the bed, we’re going to sleep.”

Kojiro laughed again, always the laughing drunk. “Fine, fine.”

“I could lift you and your skateboard straight over my head.”

Kaoru honestly couldn’t remember what they were arguing about at this point, but he could help but left, glancing at Kojiro’s left shoulder, which was freshly wrapped in plastic and sporting a new tattoo. “No you can’t, idiot, one of your arms is out of commission.”

“I could lift you with one arm,” Kojiro said with so much confidence that Kaoru wanted to kick him. “I’ve lifted you with one arm.”

Kaoru made an irritated noise, “That’s hardly the same thing, considering you slung me over your shoulder.”

“So let me prove it,” Kojiro grinned slyly and Kaoru rolled his eyes, setting down his board and pushing off down the street.

“I’m not your prop,” he called over his shoulder, glancing back to see Kojiro riding to catch up with him. A fresh tattoo hardly precluded Kojiro from skateboarding, after all, though it certainly limited him from doing a vast majority of things.

“You aren’t,” Kojiro said when he caught up, “but you’re easy to carry, scrawny.”

“Shut up, gorilla, not everyone is as freakishly muscular as you are.”

“Freakishly muscular, huh?” Kojiro’s grin hadn’t let up and Kaoru wanted to punch his freshly tattooed arm for a moment. Out of respect for the artist, however, he refrained (not to mention even that would be a step too far, considering how tender the expanse was for Kojiro, and for all of their arguing and for as many times as Kaoru had hit him over the years, it was never with the intention to genuinely hurt him on any level) and automatically made a turn for a shortcut that they always took.

“You spend hours at the gym and exorbitant amounts of money on protein powders. Yes, freakishly muscular.”

“All natural though.”

“I haven’t ruled out steroid use yet,” Kaoru wasn’t being at all serious, they both knew but Kojiro made an affronted noise anyways as he stopped in front of the wall that they often scaled on this path. The sight of it gave Kaoru pause, as he hadn’t been thinking about the fact that Kojiro had a fresh tattoo and likely couldn’t make this climb anymore, and he started to turn. “Never mind, let’s ——”

“What? I’ve got it,” Kojiro said, eyebrow raising.

Kaoru stared at him incredulously, “You just got a tattoo done, moron, and you always give me a boost here.”

“So?” Kojiro stepped off of his board and handed it to Kaoru, who took it automatically, stepping over to the wall and crouching down, cupping one hand for Kaoru to step on. “Come on, we don’t have all night, there’s a beef that I want to watch and we’re cutting it close.”

“You’re going to strain your arm,” Kaoru said, setting his free hand that wasn’t holding two skateboards on his hip, “or injure yourself in some way, and then you won’t be able to use either.”

“Kaoru,” Kojiro said cajolingly, eyebrow raised, and Kaoru sighed, rolling his eyes and walking over. He supposed that Kojiro wouldn’t strain himself too badly getting Kaoru over the wall, though how he was going to manage to get over himself he had no idea.

He balanced the skateboards carefully in one arm and set his foot into Kojiro’s waiting palm, having to regain his balance when he threatened to lose it given he wasn’t used to it only being one of Kojiro’s hands bracing him, but after a moment of wavering he steadied himself, looked upwards, and nodded.

What he didn’t prepare himself for was being summarily launched into the air.

It was higher than Kojiro normally got him, considering that usually Kojiro would simply lift him until he could get the skateboards on top of the wall and then pull himself up the rest of the way and he didn’t have to work hard to get Kaoru up there using both of his arms. Now, Kaoru was boosted into the air and practically cleared the wall, and he acted wholly on instinct to get his free hand atop the wall and push himself entirely over, landing awkwardly on the other side through a vague haze of absolute, objective, utter confusion. It took him longer than he would’ve liked, aka as long as it took Kojiro to somehow get himself over the wall, to realize that he hadn’t just been lifted, he had essentially been thrown. With one hand. And the rest of Kojiro’s body, to be wholly fair, but.

For a blinding, awful moment, Kaoru found his mind stuttering on the fact that Kojiro had just thrown him clear of a wall with, effectively, one arm. He was perfectly aware of how strong Kojiro was, he would even consider himself more aware of the fact that his muscles weren’t only for show than most people tended to be in the grand scheme of things, but the sheer amount of strength needed to generate the amount of forced required to vault a fully grown man (who wasn’t even that scrawny, despite what Kojiro said, Kaoru had more muscle mass than the average fully grown adult but he was more lean muscle than bulk) clear of a wall that was approximately eight feet tall was. Immense.

And there was Kojiro, grinning at him and looking aggravatingly smug, and Kaoru wasn’t even sure how he had gotten over the wall, himself. Well, that was a lie, the only way that Kojiro could have gotten over it was to jump and grab onto the ledge with one arm and then pull himself over with brute strength alone, lifting the entirety of his body weight with one hand. Kaoru had seen him do one armed pull ups before, it certainly wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. God.

Kaoru was aware, in a distant way as if it weren’t actually part of what he was feeling and wasn’t what was running through his head right this moment, that he wasn’t only feeling incredulous confusion intermingled with objective fury at the fact that he was just thrown and Kojiro could’ve hurt himself. No, those weren’t the only things that he was feeling at the moment, though he desperately wished they were. Instead, he was feeling legitimately interested in, if not outright aroused by, the sheer strength that Kojiro had just shown and that was mortifying in and of itself.

He very badly wanted to punch him in the face, which would be deserved at this point, in his opinion.

“What was that?” Kaoru said after a moment of glaring incredulously at Kojiro, who reached for his skateboard, which Kaoru withheld, staring at him hard.

“Hey, I told you I could,” Kojiro said with a shrug, making a grab for his skateboard.

Kaoru shifted out of his reach, “You _boost_ me normally, you don’t throw me over the wall, neanderthal!”

“I said I could lift you over my head with one warm, scrawny.”

“You threw me to prove a point?” there was a dangerous lilt to his voice, and Carla was vibrating against his wrist in response to his spike in adrenaline.

“You weren’t in any danger, if you hadn’t gotten over the wall I would’ve caught you,” Kojiro, damn him, actually looked hurt at the vague insinuation that he would have allowed Kaoru to get hurt.

“I know I wasn’t in any danger, you idiot,” Kaoru practically threw Kojiro’s skateboard at him, feeling viciously pleased when he fumbled with it and winced when he instinctively moved his left arm to grab it. Of course he hadn’t been in any danger, Kojiro would never put him in danger purposefully, and he went to impressive lengths to avoid putting Kaoru in danger accidentally. “You could’ve hurt yourself!”

He was uncomfortably aware that he was angry with Kojiro for more reasons than he was citing, though he wasn’t willing to yell at Kojiro for being… an objectively attractive and strong man, which Kaoru had noticed before on various (perhaps too various) occasions as it was. Yelling at him about it would just be ridiculous, wouldn’t it? And make his ego aggravatingly larger as a result. Granted, Kaoru was legitimately frustrated with Kojiro for potentially hurting himself. That wasn’t a lie, and it was predominantly why he was angry, never mind the fact that he was inconveniently attracted to Kojiro’s ridiculous display of strength.

“Ow, god, I wasn’t going to hurt myself,” Kojiro rolled his left shoulder and Kaoru glanced at it for a moment, before getting frustrated and looking back at Kojiro’s glare. “I know my limits, bench two times your weight regularly.”

“This isn’t the gym, you were throwing me above a wall,” Kaoru set down his skateboard and set off, hearing Kojiro follow suit, though not without complaint. “And you didn’t even prove your point, you used more than your arm to lift me.”

“What —— I did prove my point, I threw you one armed above the wall!”

“As if you didn’t use your lower body and core strength to help.”

“I did it with only one arm!”

“It doesn’t count, you idiot!”

Being sick was frustrating not only because it came with an aching body and general, inescapable lethargy that seemed to blanket the entirety of the body in a smothering, awful hold, but because it made it essentially impossible to take care of yourself, given that there was no energy to spare and simply the action of standing up was trying enough as it was. Kaoru despised being sick, though he supposed no one legitimately enjoyed being sick, and above his objective hatred of being ill was admitting that he was sick to begin with.

It was immature, yes, but he was a busy man and he had things to do that couldn’t be put on hold for illness. Commissions to complete, clients to meet, inventions to finish, not to mention skateboarding taking up the majority of his time, therefore Kaoru didn’t have the spare time to be under the weather.

Regardless of how miserable he was and how desperately he wanted to close his eyes until the headache pounding at his temples went away instead of squinting at a commission form that he had received.

He felt, at once, overly warm and freezing cold and had loosened his kimono only to wrap a blanket around his shoulders and it was a contrast that was frustrating him almost as much as his head was and almost as much as his aching throat was, as well. He squinted at the window, debating whether or not it was worth the effort to get up and close it, because the sounds of the street below were aggravating and the breeze felt like ice against his skin, even though the weather was objectively lovely outside.

Kaoru still hadn’t decided before the door to his office within his studio opened and Kojiro walked into the room, because of course he did. He had a moment to simply glare at the man and wonder which of his employees had betrayed him (potentially his manager, she had given him a long and lingering look before she deigned to leave his presence earlier with his glare following her) before Kojiro fixed him with a thoroughly unamused borderline disappointed look, mouth downturned and eyebrows furrowed. It would be heartbreaking or guilt-provoking, to someone.

It had no effect on Kaoru. Kojiro had always given him that exact look every time he rejected the idea that he was sick.

“What are you doing here?” he snapped irritably, tightening the blanket around his shoulders. “I don’t have time to entertain you today.”

“I’m here to take you home,” Kojiro said dismissively, closing the distance between them and pulling the paper from Kaoru’s hands, heedless of his protests.

“I have work to do,” Kaoru didn’t really have the right to sound quite so indignant, but he was still firmly within the realms of denying that he was currently ill, so he stood by it and reached for the paper, which Kojiro dumped unceremoniously behind him. “Stop being disruptive, don’t you have a restaurant to run, you idiot?”

“We’re closed on Thursdays,” Kojiro said simply as he kneeled beside Kaoru, who was suddenly remembering that it was, indeed, Thursday. Before he could formulate a response to that, however, Kojiro was taking his face between his hands and Kaoru started slightly as their foreheads were pressed together. Kaoru went slightly cross eyed trying to stare at Kojiro, whose eyes were closed, and he could feel his eyebrows furrow against his. “You’re burning up,” Kojiro said when he leaned back, sounding unfairly accusing.

“I was in the sun a few minutes ago,” Kaoru lied, ignoring the way that his heart had started to race secondary to their proximity, stubbornly looking away from the idiot in front of him.

“No you weren’t,” Kojiro said easily, pulling the blanket from around Kaoru’s shoulder and, before he could protest, picking him up. Out of absolutely nowhere. Without asking, checking, making sure that he was alright with this, or anything resembling asking for permission, the absolute _gall_ of this man, truly. But instead of being polite, which Kojiro was apparently incapable of doing, Kaoru found himself tucked against his side, legs slung around his hips, and absolutely gobsmacked.

“Wh —— put me _down_ you imbecile,” he couldn’t quite work up the energy to punch Kojiro and, instead, struggled fruitlessly against his absurdly strong hold. “What are you going to do, carry me to my bed?”

“Pretty much,” Kojiro said easily, glancing at him with a rueful smile, “you suck at taking care of yourself when you’re sick, so I’ll do it for you.”

“I’m not a child, Kojiro,” Kaoru certainly felt like a child, but he knew that there was no feasible way that he was getting out of Kojiro’s grip without a legitimate struggle or unless Kojiro put him down of his own volition. Both of which seemed increasingly unlikely given the situation, but he managed to struggle for a few more moments before a wave of dizziness passed over him and he gave up and tucked his face against Kojiro’s neck as they stepped outside and he listened to Kojiro lock the doors. “This is ridiculous.”

“You’re ridiculous,” was he imagining the immense fondness in Kojiro’s voice? Well, he certainly didn’t imagine it when he patted Kaoru’s hip and half landed on his ass, though he didn’t quite have the will to point it out. “People normally take days off when they’re sick.”

“I felt fine this morning,” Kaoru said, and it was only half of a lie. He had felt functional when he woke up, but could feel the bare edges of illness beginning to creep up on him. Whether or not he could make it through a workday was up in the air, at best, and logically staying at home was the better option considering he could get his staff ill with his presence, but he had simply put on a facemask and gone to work regardless. “I can walk myself.”

Kojiro hummed noncommittally and Kaoru sighed, ignoring the amount of people that they were passing, considering it was midmorning. Objectively, it was embarrassing to literally be carried through the streets, but if nothing else his apartment was nearby his studio, and they got there within several minutes of sedate walking. Kojiro didn’t even have the audacity to pretend like carrying Kaoru down several city blocks was tiring, and ascended the stairs to his floor with ease that spoke of how little Kaoru’s weight was effecting him.

Stupid meathead gorilla.

Kaoru found himself deposited onto his couch, and when he tried to sit up he was simply pushed into laying down by Kojiro’s firm hand. They glared at each other for several moments before Kaoru groaned and relented, lying down and pulling a blanket around him mulishly, ignoring the way that Kojiro smiled at him.

For a while he listened to Kojiro move around the apartment, staring at the blank television and blinking slowly. Kaoru complained when Kojiro gave him water and medicine to take, because now he was descending into being outright petulant because he was sick, but he took it regardless and kicked Kojiro (with some difficulty) when he reached out to pat his cheek approvingly. And he summarily ignored the soft, strange way that Kojiro looked at him, a smile curving his mouth and the lines of his face gentled by something or other.

At some point he dropped off into a fitful, fever-dream sleep, uncomfortable and muddy, not properly restful but instead draining. He found himself waking intermittently when his front door closed and then later when he could hear Kojiro moving around his kitchen and then not long later when he could smell something good cooking. He was properly roused when Kojiro couched down in front of him, holding a bowl of hot broth, beckoning him to eat something.

Kaoru felt sluggish and even more ill than he had earlier that day when Kojiro had picked him up. Literally picked him up. The gall. He did, however, accept the bowl of soup, body aching too much to argue pointlessly and relieved, as always, to be able to consume something as familiar as Kojiro’s cooking. Kojiro sat on the couch beside him, their knees pressed together as the television turned on with the volume nearly off, and they both ate in relative silence.

It didn’t escape Kaoru’s notice that he had, quite obviously, disrupted Kojiro’s day. Kaoru had no idea what Kojiro had planned to do today, he could dimly remember that he had mentioned something about fixing up his board when they were talking over dinner last night, but it certainly didn’t involve taking care of an ill Kaoru. It was still embarrassing and felt thoroughly unnecessary that Kojiro had appeared in the doorway of his workplace and literally carried him home because he didn’t think Kaoru capable of taking care of himself while he was ill (not that he was necessarily wrong, obviously) but Kaoru couldn’t help but feel at least slightly thankful that Kojiro had apparently dropped everything that he was doing today to come take care of him.

That was simply who Kojiro was, though. He took care of people, the model big brother of all elder brothers. He had always been this way from the moment that Kaoru had met him. Kaoru had marveled over how much Kojiro cared about his little sisters, he himself behind an only child and unfamiliar with sibling dynamics beyond what he had seen from afar, and he had marveled even further when Kojiro turned that sort of care onto him. It had been startling when he was younger, and remained to be as such as they grew into adulthood alongside each other, and it was sometimes outright confusing.

But this was simply who Kojiro was. He pour the entirety of his being into things that he cared about, whether it be his career or skateboarding or the people around him that he cared for. Kaoru was perfectly aware of the fact that he was someone that Kojiro cared a great deal about about, and furthermore that he was someone that Kojiro looked about with such stunning tenderness and bald affection in his features that Kaoru sometimes wondered if he was at all aware of it.

He would hazard a guess at no, however.

At times Kaoru wondered what it meant, and at other times knew with startling clarity what it meant. He could convince himself that it was simply wishful thinking, to think that Nanjo Kojiro loved him in a romantic light, but all context clues that he had gathered throughout his life told him otherwise. Kaoru wasn’t one to turn away from facts, himself, and thus he was simply left to wonder what to do with this information. This implacable, absolute fact.

Oh, don’t think him absolutely cruel. It was somewhat recently that Kaoru had managed to piece together that Kojiro loved him, and had likely loved him for a long period of time —— sometimes it was hard to see something that was right in front of you. Vision blurred what was immediately available if you chose to focus on the background, after all, and the mind compensated to ensure that you were not overwhelmed with visual stimuli.

But here, he ate slowly. Steadily. He felt nauseated but not like he was about to vomit and he felt lightheaded and achy and a few steps away from death, if he were to be dramatic about it. Kojiro’s cooking was always good, and it felt soothing on his scratchy throat and like a balm on his too-tight skin and Kaoru realized the answer to this non-question as he leaned his head against Kojiro’s shoulder and felt himself slipping into unconsciousness again. He felt Kojiro pull his half empty bowl from his hands, and then didn’t feel much for a while.

Kaoru resurfaced briefly when he felt Kojiro pick him up again, gathering him against his side and holding something in the other hand. It was night and the television was off and he didn’t argue as he was carried towards his room, simply curled his fingers into Kojiro’s shirt. He held fast as he was laid onto his bed, and heard Kojiro laugh softly.

“Stay,” he mumbled.

“You sure?” Kojiro said, sounding warm and amused and… something else.

Kaoru made a quiet noise and fell asleep.

“You wouldn’t dare ——”

He really should know better by now. Every time Kaoru started to say that, he always ended up regretting it. Such as now, as Kojiro grabbed him from around the knees, picked him up, and threw him into the onsen like he weighed no more than a pillow, because he was so asininely strong that Kaoru knew perfectly well that his weight barely registered to Kojiro when he was manhandling him. And, sadly, he only had a moment to lament his lot in life before he was crashing into the ocean waves

“Kojiro!” Kaoru shouted the moment he resurfaced, and he glared venomously at Kojiro who was grinning smugly from the shore.

“Technicalities,” Kojiro waved his hand dismissively.

Kaoru seriously considered throwing a rock at him, but settled for shoving him (quite uselessly) on his way out of the ocean. He didn’t even have time to appreciate the frankly ridiculous lines of his body. Then again, it wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen hundreds of times, and the novelty had worn off by now.

Well, mostly.

Everything hurt.

It certainly didn’t help that he had tried to force himself back up and to standing out of sheer spite alone with Adam standing over him, leering and terrible and all-consuming, only to collapse in the attempt to the sound of his sick laughter. That had made everything somehow infinitely worse, and Kaoru wasn’t certain if it was primarily because he had moved or that Adam had just laughed at him and his piteous attempts.

God, everything hurt.

It was shockingly hard to take stock of everything that hurt on your body when everything hurt, though being hit in the face with a skateboard didn’t help anything, considering how rattled his brain was feeling. Or maybe it was the abject and irrational sense of betrayal he was feeling. It was senseless and pointless to feel betrayed by someone like Adam, he knew, because it wasn’t like they were ever truly friends. They had skateboarded together, passed time together, he had found himself strangely attached to Adam as a concept, had enjoyed being told that he was _special_ in some way.

 _You’re boring._ Awful. Terrible. It didn’t feel good, to be told that you’re so boring that you don’t even warrant notice, and Kaoru thought it was only fair that he be allowed to be offended by that, even if that offense was intermingled with hurt. Memories, shattered to pieces.

Though it wasn’t like he idolized Adam at this point in his life. Objectively he knew that the things Adam did were terrible and he no longer had the excuse of adolescence to protect him. He was, altogether, an awful person who deserved to be taken down given that he apparently enjoyed causing pain to anyone who bothered to skateboard with him. Or, anyone who bothered and who didn’t meet his deadly expectations. An Adam looking for his Eve… what an absolute joke.

Maybe Kaoru was the joke at the moment, though.

Unbidden, he thought about Kojiro as Adam walked away. He would be disappointed that Kaoru lost —— though that would be nothing to how angry he imagined he was at this very moment. Anger directed wholly at Adam intermingled with worry for Kaoru, and Kaoru thought about attempting to move, if only to drag himself off of the track, considering that he guessed there were cameras fixed on him at this very moment, but god. Everything hurt. Everything. He thought that if he moved he might throw up, and he couldn’t figure out if his head was what hurt the most or if it was his leg.

He wondered if his jaw was dislocated. Or fractured. The skateboard had certainly hit him hard enough to cause something to happen there, but he felt as though he were a singular exposed nerve, at the moment, and couldn’t pinpoint any definitive injuries. Who hit someone going upwards of 80 kilometers per hour in the face with a fucking skateboard?

Well. Adam did, clearly.

 _He must be lonely,_ Kojiro had said. Lonely. Was he lonely? Was Adam lonely? If he was, it was his own fault, Kaoru was currently pissed off enough to believe as much, and he was certain that it was true, regardless of what little history they had. _Boring._

It was better to think about Kojiro. It didn’t ease the pain in his body (nothing but outright morphine or high doses of something would, he was sure) but it was at least marginally motivating insofar as getting himself moving went. There wasn’t a point in lying here on the track any longer, and it was honestly embarrassing to consider that all spectators were just watching him lay here, unable to move because of pain.

He wiggled his fingers first, and then his toes. Wondered about the look that Kojiro had given him when he ran up to him before the race, how strange and misplaced it had been on Joe’s face. It had been something soft, something terribly tender, something horribly affectionate and almost sad. Something that wasn’t meant to be present at S. Kaoru had, instinctively, felt the need to quash it before anyone looked too closely, and therefore he had. He wondered what Kojiro was about to say to him.

Perhaps he should ask.

“Kaoru,” Kojiro’s voice surprised him more than it should’ve and he started from where he laid on the ground and promptly regretted it, groaning as pain zipped through his body faster that it had any right to. “Don’t try to move,” gentle hands on his shoulders, and Kaoru peered up at him.

Kojiro looked wretched. There was an unmasked fury lingering in his eyes that fought with the agonizing level of panic that he clearly felt, causing some of the components of his expression to be mismatched. His brows were furrowed and upturned, his mouth torn into a scowl, his eyes hard and burning but he was looking at Kaoru the way that he always looked at him when he thought Kaoru wasn’t looking. It was a strange combination, and Kaoru wanted to comment on it. “You look ridiculous,” he managed, trying to move his jaw minimally and ending up barely audible for his trouble.

“Really?” Kojiro said, exasperated, but relief bled into his expression. If Kaoru could still manage to be insulting at a time like this, then he was at least in his right mind. It helped that anger and pain were steadying him in turn. “Hold still, I’ve got you, Kaoru,” he always said his name in repetition when he was worried, Kaoru had noticed that when they were younger.

“Is he okay?” he could hear Miya from somewhere behind Kojiro.

“We have to get him to a hospital,” Shadow sounded more panicked than Kojiro looked.

“Hold on,” Kojiro said, more to Kaoru than either of the other two, and Kaoru was blanketed in searing warmth, cocooned by the way Kojiro smelled. His jacket, he realized dimly. Kojiro slid his arms a carefully as he could stand beneath Kaoru’s knees, and he sharply inhaled as his leg was jostled. God, _everything hurt._ “Sorry, Kaoru,” he was being quiet, as if they were the only two in the world, and Kaoru grabbed desperately for the leather cord of Kojiro’s necklace to anchor himself with the arm that wasn’t being pressed against Kojiro’s chest as he slid his arm beneath Kaoru’s torso. He couldn’t hold back a pained wheeze as Kojiro stood and adjusted him as carefully as he could, tucking him against his chest, and Kaoru turned his face against Kojiro’s bulk. Even breathing hurt, at this point, and he wondered if his ribs were entirely in tact. Falling at the speed he had meant that there was probably a laundry list of injuries littering his body. He wouldn’t be surprised if there was rib involvement.

The world spun alarmingly, even with his eyes closed, and his head pounded. “Kojiro,” Kaoru said against his skin, sounding much more put together than he felt. “I might fall unconscious.” Between the pain and his exhaustion, he wouldn’t be surprised if he did, which wasn’t ideal when he likely had a concussion. Or, who knows, a brain bleed.

“No,” Kojiro said with a ferocity that felt like a physical presence. “Stay awake, Kaoru.”

“Amuse me, then,” he mumbled.

Shadow was the one who started talking (Miya was in too much shock, too young to be dealing with any of this besides, and Kojiro was too furious to manage much at all, Kaoru imagined) and Kaoru focused on his voice somewhere to Kojiro’s right. He talked about his work at the flower shop and the clients that he had met and spoken to today, including a man who was trying his best to make up for his absences to his wife, a woman who was utterly lovestruck and didn’t know what to do but leave the object of her affection flowers without even a note to attempt to identify her by, and an elderly couple that stopped by the store several times per week on their walks to pick up fresh flowers for their dining room table. He spoke at length about his boss that he was enamored with, and Kaoru listened intently, mumbling spare commentary every now and then until they arrived at the hospital.

He convulsively held on tight to Kojiro’s necklace as they entered the emergency room and he leaned down to set Kaoru on the bed. Kojiro laughed softly and entirely without humor, looking at him with an expression that he could only call stricken, and with the bulk of his body hiding Kaoru from sight he touched Kaoru’s face gently, thumb brushing beneath his eye, and Kaoru breathed raggedly.

“Kaoru,” Kojiro said quietly. He sounded like he was in pain.

“Kojiro,” Kaoru said, wishing that he had pain killers but needing to get this out, get it off of his chest so maybe he could breathe more easily. “Thank you.”

Slowly, bit by bit, he loosened his hold on Kojiro and let himself collapse back against the bed. His head ached fiercely, and he stared at Kojirio’s face as the nurses and doctors fluttered around him, and stared at him as he was taken back to imaging. It was a relief that Kojiro was still there when he returned, Miya and Shadow both also crammed into the small room. It was significantly less of a relief when Kojiro bowed out when Kaoru was being transferred to an inpatient floor for observation purposes, citing that he had to get Miya home.

Kaoru, for a dizzying moment, wanted to demand Kojiro return to him, though the notion died in his throat before he really gave it voice as he realized how ridiculous of a demand that was, and he simply nodded, instead. He watched them go, Shadow yawning from where he had fallen asleep, and Miya complaining that he didn’t have to go bed. Kojiro glanced back at him in the doorway, curtain parted to leave and they simply stared at each other for a moment. Kaoru lifted his uninjured hand in goodbye, and felt summarily stupid, but Kojiro smiled in stages at the sight, before lifting a hand in return and leaving, curtain swaying behind him.

When he was transferred to his own room, away from the general chaos of the emergency room, with bandages applied and the knowledge that he could sleep but a nurse would be stopping by his room to wake him regularly, he remained reclined in bed, staring at the ceiling and then out the window. At some point he heard his phone and picked it up, staring at the message that Kojiro had sent, asking if he was okay, and after a moment of deliberation he replied that he was fine, and in his own room. Visiting hours were long since over, so it wasn’t as if Kojiro could come and sit with him, regardless of if he wanted to or not. Logically, he knew that Kojiro would much prefer to keep an eye on him closely, but that wasn’t possible at this conjecture.

So Kaoru tried to sleep, hopeful that his painkillers would do the job for him and failed, and failed again when he asked his Carla bracelet to play the familiar lullaby that often led him off to sleep, and failed again when he wrapped himself in Kojiro’s jacket.

Restless anxiety curled in his throat, not at all dulled by the medicine like the pain had been.

The only place he wanted to go once he escaped the clutches of the hospital was to Kojiro. It wasn’t at all surprising, because why on earth would that surprise him, and he made his way there on his Carla wheelchair, heedless of the strange looks that he got as he maneuvered his way to _Sialaluce_. Kojiro wasn’t even surprised when he opened the doors, instead greeting him with general exasperation and hardly hidden affection beneath the veneer of disapproval, considering Kaoru had left the hospital against medical advice.

Exhaustion followed fast on the heels of irritation, and he found that he wanted nothing more than to sleep, now that he was with Kojiro. He was dozing more than he was sleeping, though definitively more asleep than awake, and infinitely too tired to bother opening his eyes. He heard Kojiro return and heard his soft indignation. Heard him pour two glasses and speak aloud, primarily to himself but to Kaoru, too, could hear the clink of their glasses together. Kaoru wanted to say something, but he wasn’t sure what. He felt as though something enormous had been placed before him, something that was startling in its absolute enormity and he wasn’t sure what to do with it.

It was like when he realized that Kojiro was in love with him, and didn’t know precisely what to do about that, either. But he had figured out what to do with it, hadn’t he? With time and introspection and application of logic and study of his own emotions and, more specifically, his feelings for Kojiro.

“Kojiro,” he said quietly, not bothering to open his eyes, but hearing Kojiro jerk, the legs of his chair scraping against the floor in surprise. “Carry me to bed.” He opened his eyes to slits and saw that Kojiro looked begrudgingly amused, smiling wanly down at him, remnants of however he had been looking at Kaoru moments ago still on his face intermingled with surprise.

“Pushy,” Kojiro said, reaching out to brush Kaoru’s hair out of his face, as if he couldn’t help it. “You have Carla, don’t you?”

“But you’re here, idiot,” Kaoru said, voice lacking in venom given how tired he was. “I’m injured, you can’t say no.”

“Don’t pull the injury card on me,” Kojiro rolled his eyes, but he stood up anyways, leaning down to pull Kaoru into his arms regardless. The painkillers were doing their job stunningly, and Kaoru barely felt any pain as he was lifted from the wheelchair and into Kojiro’s arms. He leaned against his chest and breathed deeply, feeling a dull pang from his ribs. “I thought you hated it when I carried you.”

“I did,” Kaoru smoothed his hand over Kojiro’s shirt idly, feeling the clean, pressed material beneath his touch. It had always been, in general, embarrassing when Kojiro carried him, or tried to, but right now he didn’t want anything else but to be carried by him. Or held by him, if you were going to be technical about it. He was safe, here, in the bracing solidity of his arms. “You’re convenient, though.”

“Convenient, am I?” Kojiro sounded goodhumored as he carried Kaoru the short distance to his apartment, balancing him precariously on one arm as he fished for his keys. Kojiro’s apartment was nearly as familiar as his own, he had spent so much time in it, and Kaoru was the one who reached out to turn on the hall lights with his good arm. “Thanks.”

He looked up at Kojiro and, not for the first time, wondered where all of his capacity to care came from. His heart, most likely, though that was a romanticist’s answer. Always so intent to ensure that Kaoru was never alone, not really, not truly, always wanting to remain by his side no matter what happened and no matter what passed. It was the sort of wholehearted selfless caring that was better suited for the hero in a story than it was for real life, and Kaoru had always wondered how Kojiro existed like that, day by day, forever and always a caretaker first and everything else secondarily. He was aggressive, certainly, and womanizer and ridiculous, but he was also highly intuitive and intelligent and over aware.

Kojiro burned slowly, steadily. Like the sun, like any star in the sky. It was a marvel of existence, if Kaoru were being honest.

“Are you sure you shouldn’t be at the hospital?”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Carla didn’t help?”

“No.”

There was a moment of silence as Kojiro digested the weight of that statement and the enormity that it held. It hadn’t escaped his notice, Kaoru was sure, that he had fallen asleep easily sitting within Kojiro’s restaurant, while it had been impossible for him to fall asleep in a hospital bed, regardless of the fact that Carla was equipped to deal with his anxiety-induced insomnia, because he had crated her that way. And, if the gentling of the line of Kojiro’s mouth was anything to go by, it hadn’t escaped his notice at all.

“You’ll be sorry when you wake up in pain in the morning,” Kojiro carried him into his bedroom kneeling down to place Kaoru gingerly into the bed. “I don’t have painkillers anywhere near as strong as what they got in the hospital.”

“I’ll deal with it then,” Kaoru said dismissively, brushing his fingers absently across Kojiro’s jaw. Kojiro looked at him with a flayed open expression, like he was caught between hope and concern. His eyes had always been too expressive, had always given him away before Kojiro had figured out how to mask things. Or perhaps it was less Kojiro masking things and more Kaoru keeping up with the ever changing intricacies of him. “Kojiro.”

“Yeah?” the strange thing was that Kojiro had never stared at Kaoru’s mouth, not the way that most men (or women, he supposed) did when they wanted to kiss him, or the way that he had seen Kojiro alternate his stare deliberately between a person’s mouth and eyes, silently cajoling. Instead, Kojiro had only ever been one to stare into Kaoru’s eyes, as though if he looked anywhere else it would be too blatant or flagrant. Or maybe it was because Kojiro was an embarrassing romantic.

“Kiss me,” Kaoru would have done it himself, if moving even slightly didn’t seem comparable to scaling a sheer cliff without climbing gear.

Kojiro’s expression went vulnerable —— looked blown open, as though taken aback by this turn of events, as if he didn’t believe what he was hearing. It hurt to look at. Still, he didn’t hesitate before ghosting his palm over Kaoru’s face, where a bruise was somehow still blooming over where his face had been bashed in by Adam, and he couldn’t help but wince at the pain that radiated from the spot. The motion gave Kojiro pause, and he stared at Kaoru with worry pouring off of him in waves, brows furrowed.

“Do it before I do and throw up all over you from vertigo, you feebleminded gorilla.”

“You’re so…” Kojiro seemed to be talking mostly to himself, amused but still shocked and carrying in him shades of irritation, even as he leaned down and kissed Kaoru, apparently trying to be as gentle as possible. Gentle and soft and hovering, barely a kiss at all. Kaoru made an impatient noise against his mouth and lifted his good arm, looping it over his neck and pulling him down, only to hiss and turn away when it put an unpleasant amount of pressure on the injured half of his face. Kojiro was quiet for a moment before laughing against him helplessly, half holding himself up over Kaoru’s body, careful not to touch him even slightly as he laughed. “I’ve imagined kissing you hundreds of times, but I never imagined you this badly injured.”

“That’s an error in your own judgement,” Kaoru said, pulling at Kojiro’s hair in an attempt to get him to kiss him again.

“What, it’s my fault I didn’t factor in that you could be injured with your face practically bashed in when I was fantasizing about kissing you?”

“You should consider all possibilities and variables, now kiss me again.”

“God,” Kojiro muttered against his jaw, before shifting and kissing him again, this time keeping it determinedly light, despite Kaoru pulling at him and biting his mouth. Kaoru, admittedly, saw the point of it, considering that the entirety of his body still felt like one massive bruise, pain killers or no. That didn’t mean that it wasn’t frustrating, however.

Still, Kojiro kissed him slowly for several long, luxurious minutes, during which he remained seated on the edge of the bed and leaned over Kaoru with his hands pressed into the pillow on either side of his head, occasionally flitting closer to run though his hair or touch the uninjured side of his face gently. It probably wasn’t a comfortable position, though Kojiro maintained it without complaint. Kaoru, for his part, reached up with his uninjured arm and pressed his hand against Kojiro’s chest, feeling the fast rhythm of his heart beneath his palm and feeling a mildly shocking rush of possessiveness flit through his body: there and gone.

“Get some sleep,” Kojiro said a few minutes or hours or an eternity later, smiling gently down at Kaoru. His thumb brushed over Kaoru’s eyelashes and he blinked, eyes fluttering at the touch. “You look terrible.”

“Liar,” Kaoru said quietly, even as his eyes closed. Even with a bruise coloring his face and as battered as he was, Kojiro still looked at him like he was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

Kojiro laughed quietly, pulling the blankets up around Kaoru. “Yeah, I know.”

He remembered abruptly, as sleep began to wind its way around him, but instinctively Kaoru knew that he couldn’t wait. “What were you going to say to me?”

“Huh?” he could imagine Kojiro’s confused expression, vivid in the darkness, suffused by the shadows of exhaustion.

“Before I got bludgeoned with a skateboard.”

“Oh,” Kojiro sounded like he wanted to laugh but had been summarily distracted by being furious all over again, but Kaoru could feel him shift closer. Fingers touched his hair gently, and Kojiro pressed his mouth against the corner of his mouth, muttering the words, muffled against his skin, a secret for the two of them alone.

Kaoru couldn’t help but smile slightly as he slipped off easily into a dreamless sleep.

(He did regret it in the morning, because painkillers only last so long and while his injuries could have easily been more serious, they hadn’t been anything to brush off, either. And for all of the complaints and the, admittedly deserved, repetition of, “I told you,” that resulted, Kojiro carried him everywhere throughout the early morning until he got back to his wheelchair and carted him off directly to the hospital to be properly examined before a legitimate discharge. With a prescription for painkillers, this time.

But he kissed him again when they both woke up with a hesitant joy emanating from him, his hands against his face gentle, everything done with care so as to not exacerbate his injuries further. And Kaoru loved him.)

**Author's Note:**

> i thought abt adding a scene that bumped the rating to e but maybe later
> 
> you can find me on [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/widowgast) and [tumblr](http://nydorins.tumblr.com/).


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